A Cry from a child's Heart

During our preadoptive class today, we watched a video titled, "A Young Child's Point of View on Foster Care and Adoption" by The Infant-Parent Institute. The video has no pictures, just sound and words, but it has to be the most profound and moving video I have ever watched. It is narrated by children giving their view of foster care and adoption and there was not a dry face in the room after we finished watching it. It really makes you face the reality of adoption related behaviors (like bed wetting, defecating outside the parents rooms everyday for weeks, control through food, harming pets or even children in the home, etc). The video did an excellent job of showing how the children get to these behaviors, what the behaviors mean and what it means if a parent is not in there for the long haul. It really forces one to have to examine if they have what it takes to be there through all these behaviors. If one does not have what it takes to be able to deal with these behaviors, it does more harm to take in the child either as a foster or adoptive parent only to bail ship once the behaviors arise.

The social worker did keep her promise and give us a copy of the adoptive parents' rights that she had promised last week. The list is lengthy so brace yourselves! I will reprint word for word the rights:

• Familes have the right to apply for and to be considered for adoption. If a decision is made not to approve a family for adoption they have the right to appeal the decision.

Yes my friends, that is the total extent of the rights of the adoptive parents! I turned the page over and over again to make sure I was not missing something. I even clarified with the social worker that I had gotten the right printout. Nothing about the right to services for our foster care adoptive children, nothing about the right to get all information about our children available to the foster care agency, nothing about a right to decline a placement of a chid whose needs a parent feels they cannot possibly meet, etc, etc.

Magic Number 8

Yep, we finally had our 8th attempt to complete what should have been a four meeting homestudy (social worker interrupted the first meeting so that we could be transferred to another county's Child Welfare Agency; social worker missed 2 appointments; we had 1 visit with a social worker from the state before our local Child Welfare Agency decided we did not need to be licensed by the state after all. Finally, we had the mandated 4 visits with our current social worker)! I had been so looking forward to finally completing the home-study that I had not really been stressing much about the home walk through (the final part of the home-study process). Since we have a four year old, the home is already child-proofed so we did not really to worry about that. It was a pretty strange feeling having someone walk through your home as they go through the process of determining if you will be fit parents!

This final visit lasted for 2 1/2 hours. The social worker had insisted on having our son there for the final visit, but pretty much ignored him and asked if we could send him to another room once she got here! How does a four year old entertain himself in another room when mommy and daddy are home? He normally does not watch any T.V or movies during the weekdays and he did not know what to do with himself after being allowed to watch T.V. on a Thursday! He must have thought mommy and daddy finally lost their marbles! He finally took a nap after he figured mom and dad were not going to be too much fun to have around—no playing horsie, trains or hide and seek with dad today!

The social worker brought up open and closed adoptions. We discussed some of the pros and cons of the amount of openness based on the research I have done on the subject. I felt there were legitimate concerns and more so considering that the children in the foster care system have been forcibly removed from sometimes really dysfunctional birth families. There are issues like the child’s sense of rejection if the birth family stops contact, reduced ability to assimilate into the adoptive family, power struggles with the child possibly playing the birth and adoptive family against each other, identity confusion during the teen years, unreasonable expectations from both families etc, etc. However, the social worker really seemed to minimize these concerns and actually stated that only people on the fringe feel that open adoptions are not beneficial for all parties concerned! Now this is a social worker who works for the local child welfare system and most of the children come from really dysfunctional families and require supervised visits with the birth families! I think she has buried her head in the sand if she does not think there are legitimate concerns and considers everyone who has a differing opinion as being on the fringe! For me, this is an issue to be looked at on a case by case basis and one should not make a decision blindly without fully educating themselves on all the pros and cons.

To keep things ever more interesting, the social worker advised that she had been re-thinking her decision not to follow state guidelines in approving us to adopt either a girl or boy. California guidelines state that parents can be licensed to foster or adopt a boy or girl to share a bedroom if both are under the age of five. I thought this matter was closed and we were going to be approved to only adopt a boy. However, she said she had been re-thinking this matter and wanted to see what she could do to get a waiver for us and another family. She said it was actually not a County policy not to allow boys and girls under 5 years to share a room (which is what they had advised previously), but just general unwritten guidelines! I think the social worker was a tad disappointed that I was not overjoyed that she was making an exception for us! The one thing I have learnt through out this journey with the foster care system is to always expect the unexpected and that what we are told in one meeting will likely change in the next!

Finally Excited to take a class!

After our false start 4 months ago, we finally started our Foster/Adoption classes today. We will have classes from 9-4 for the next three Saturdays. The class consists of prospective foster and adoptive parents. There are 4 facilitators in the class--2 social workers from our local Child Welfare Agency, a foster and adoptive mom, and a college professor in Early Childhood Education who is also an adoptive mom to three sons. In keeping with the place where we live, the social workers spent the majority of the morning talking about the rights of children. Needless to say, the “right” that was most emphasized was the right of the foster and adopted children to have the foster or adoptive parents provide access to images, movies, books and magazines with different types of gender and sexual identities that the children may decide to take on. They really hammered this point and finally one prospective foster parent asked what the rights of the foster and adoptive parents were! It was unspoken but clear to all that she meant the rights to have religious or personal convictions about bringing materials in their home depicting lifestyles that they may not agree with. One social worker really stammered through the answer and finally said she would bring a list of the rights of parents to the next class. am really curious what is emphasized in the pre-foster and adoptive classes in the Midwest!

I am always fascinated by group dynamics and it never fails that in every class I have ever attended, there is always one student who answers almost all the questions, tries to finish the teacher/professor’s sentences, as well as tries to clarify for the teacher/professor and the class what the teacher/professor meant! This class is not much different. We had tons of moments of comedic relief with our class “representative”. Our representative is taking college classes in Early Childhood Education and she took such pains to let the class and professor know that she is a good student and remembers all the terminology from her ECE classes! At almost any given moment, you could see people’s shoulders shaking or tears streaming down their faces as they tried to suppress their laughter—the four given speakers each used different techniques to try to ignore our class’s spokersperson so that they could move the class along. The techniques had varying degrees of success!

Green-eyed monsters?

I just love, love, love my son’s pediatrician. He genuinely loves children and the practice of medicine. He is knowledgeable, patient, and never hurries you and constantly asks if you have any other questions. He has the ability to make you feel as though your child is the only child he has to see that day! He truly understands the angst of new parents and if you call with a minor problem such as a child throwing up, he will advise you what you need to do to keep the child hydrated. However, if he still hears any inkling of worry on the parents’ part, he will promptly make time to see your child and reassure the parents before sending them home with the same instructions as he had given them on the phone—usually pedialyte! He never makes you feel like a dork for worrying unnecessarily—his maxim is that a worried parent does not make a very good caregiver, so he believes in treating the child and making sure the parents are reassured! He totally believes in patient-centered medicine, and sees the practice of medicine as a partnership between the patient and the physician. He gives you all the different options about resolving a medical issue, and then his recommendation based on his experiences, but then totally lets the parents choose the option that works for them. Knowing that he has your child’s best interest at heart, it is so easy to follow his recommendations! We have never chosen an option that was not his recommendation!

Our son had his well-baby check up today and we discussed the adoption. He took time to ask us about our adoption and also gave us input from a pediatrician's point of view. He advised that most times when a new child comes into the home, parents tend to attribute the older child's acting out to jealousy of the new sibling. However, he told us that jealousy requires abstract thinking and a child has not yet mastered this skill. A child acts out to get attention because he or she understands that mom and dad are not spending the same amount of time with them as before. It would require abstract thinking to connect the arrival of the new child to the less attention and then going the next step to squarely place the blame on the new state of affairs on the new child. He said it would be the same as a parent spending a lot of time planning a family reunion. When the child acts out to get mom or dad's attention, the parent instinctively knows that the child is acting out because mom and dad are spending more time on the phone and less time with them. The parents never say the child is jealous of family reunions! He advised that the parents spend time trying to solve a problem that does not exist—“jealousy of the new child” instead of trying to solve the actual problem--carving out time to spend with the older child and reassuring the child of mom and dad’s love for them.

We talked about my son’s eating patterns, and while my son was playing with my husband and reading a book on trains, I told the pediatrician we are still trying to get new ways for my son to eat his vegetables. I did not even think that my son heard our conversation, but later when the pediatrician was examining him, he asked him what his favorite food was. My son promptly replied, “Vegetables”! Of course, I will be reminding him of this!

Life from a Four Year Old's Perspective.

Our dear friends had their first baby and she is three weeks old today. My girlfriend is the first person my son knows personally who has been pregnant and these are some of his thoughts as my friend progressed in her pregnancy:

1. Early in the pregnancy when my friend was not showing and my son was trying to figure out how a baby could be in her tummy: "Your baby is mashed up in your tummy."


2. Farther along in her pregnancy to explain her expanding waistline: "You are eating too much."


3. After not seeing her for three weeks and she now being considerably bigger: "You have too many babies in your tummy."


4. Farther along in her pregnancy: "Your tummy looks like a garbage truck." Mommy's reaction--major embarrassment and wanting the earth to swallow her up. My pregnant friend's reaction--major laughter and repeatedly asking my son to repeat what he just said. Oh dear!


5. On our way to the hospital to see the baby after the baby was born: "Why does she need to go to see the doctor?" Mom: "So that the doctor can remove the baby from her mommy's tummy so that her mommy and daddy can hold her and love her and raiser her to be a big girl". Son: hysterical laughter for 15 minutes and saying I was kidding! I wish I knew the image he had or why he thought this was so hilarious!


6. After baby is born and he totally falls in love with her: "Marley's mom should not eat her baby and keep her in her tummy for a long time. That is not okay. We only eat food, not babies." He thought she ate the baby, hence the reason why her baby was in her tummy all this time! Okay mommy, how else would anything get into a tummy? :)

I am so thankful these are very good friends who know my son well and know he does not have a mean bone in his body! Of course it helps that he says these things with great concern, an endearing smile and when he is giving my friend a hug. Oh how a child's mind processes information and tries to figure out the whys of things!!!

He really loves their beautiful daughter and he keeps saying all the things she will be able to do when she is a little older. At one week old he was already trying to show her his train collection and is always thinking of toys they will be able to play with when she is older! My baby is not a baby anymore--he keeps reminding me that he is a big boy now and Marley is the baby.

Apologetics and Adoption!

It is interesting that since we started our adoption journey, we have been having chance meetings with adoptive parents and also reading adoption articles in some of the magazines we subscribe to. This weekend, my husband and I went to an apologetics (a conscious, articulated defense of the claims of the Christian Faith ) conference and the topic of adoption is not quite the topic you expect to be addressed at such a conference. However, one of the speakers (Voddie Baucham) is an adoptive parent who is passionate about families. In one of the sessions, he was discussing a biblical view on love as opposed to the greco-roman myth we have regarding love. I cannot do justice to what he said, so I will excerpt his summary:

Myth 1: Love is a Random Force: "We don't choose who we fall in love with."
Myth 2: Love is an Overwhelming Force: "Love, according to the Greco-Roman myth, is an overwhelming force against which we mere mortals cannot hope to prevail.'"
Myth 3: Love is an Uncontrollable Force: "Love sometimes goes away as quickly and mysteriously as it came."
Myth 4: Love is a Sensual Force: "Love is equated with sex."

According to Baucham, the result of our culture largely buying into these myths is that "this kind of love. . . doesn't translate into other relationships. If love is a random, uncontrollable, overwhelming, sensual force, how do I love my kids?" It also makes love very tenous. Baucham points out that with this kind of notion of love, "Can we blame children of divorce for wondering when Mom or Dad is going to stop loving them the same way that they stopped loving each other?"

In contrast to the Greco-Roman myth, Baucham defines Christian love as "an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object."

If Christians had a biblical view on love, then they would never ask if adoptive parents love their adopted children as much as they love their biological children!

I had never heard of him, but he is a man after my own heart. For a sample of this thoughts, you can visit his website at:
http://www.voddiebaucham.org/vbm/home.html

Friends and Coffee!

Today, I had a coffee date with a friend and she totally got the adoption thing! Most times when I share that we are planning on adopting, people are accepting, but I never get many questions! On the one hand, this is cool since everyone has taken the news in stride, but sometimes, I really want questions about our adoption journey. My friend specifically made the coffee date so that we could talk about the adoption, she asked lots of questions as well as specifically what she could do to help. Her enthusiasm was infectious! Thank you God for good friends and coffee!!!

Homestudy meeting number???

(yes, 6th attempt--1 visit interrupted by social worker, social worker missed 2, had 2 meetings with dh and 6th one by myself. If all goes as planned 2 more meetings to go--one with dh and final one with whole family).

Today I had my meeting with the social worker and it was primarily gathering biographic information—where I was born, where I went to school, where I have worked etc, as well as my parents’ relationship, their parenting style, my relationship with my siblings and my dreams for the future. It felt strange spending about 1 ½ hours talking about myself! The social worker did ask some questions where she seemed to have already formed her own opinion. The answer was no to all presumptions, but I guess it was at the end of the day, we were both tired and something must have been lost in translation! All in all, the meeting was good. My husband meets with the social worker on Thursday, so we are moving along with the homestudy slowly, but surely.

Birthright

Today we received a voicemail message from the lady we meet at the ‘Birthright’ booth during the People Fest. She left us the number to the adoption agency they work with. Okay, we had only been looking at foster/adopt and international adoption and now here is another option! Like we are not already confused enough!!! I know we cannot control the adoption process and really want to be receptive to the direction that God leads us. I don't want to go with the path of least resistance, but really want to follow God's leading. We need prayers for clarity!

PEOPLE F.E.S.T

People F.E.S.T. was good. We went both days. My husband volunteered at the Good News Jail ministry booth on Sunday afternoon, while my son and I enjoyed sampling all the goodies—kettle corn, corn dogs and multiple flavors of shaved ice! There was a nice kid zone and my son enjoyed playing in all the inflatable astro jumps. My sister and her kids joined us on Sunday afternoon and I think the kids enjoyed the Christian bands.

The gentleman from Uganda who spearheaded the festival shared with my husband and I that a pastor had advised him not to use the name of Jesus Christ, nor give an altar call as this would put people off! Now, this was billed as an ashamedly Christian evangelistic event—from their posters, to their website, to their press releases, to the radio commercials. And a pastor would discourage the mention of the name of Christ???? And America is sending out missionaries to other countries??? Thankfully, the main organizer and the bands did not heed this advice—they relied on God’s Word. The main organizer clearly proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ on Saturday and Sunday and relied on the Holy Spirit to prepare the hearts of the hearers. Joseph Rojas, front man and songwriter for Seventh Day Slumber also gave a moving testimony of his transformation from a former criminal and drug addict to a redeemed husband and father. Praise God for the people who came forward to make a public confession in a public park during the altar call—and in California, no less!

On the adoption front, during the festival, we meet a couple who adopted 2 boys. I love hearing how God directs people to their children. The couple had started the adoption process through the foster system and had also informed friends and family of their adoption plans. They ended up doing private adoptions for both boys as people led them to two mothers who were making adoption plans for their unborn children. They also have an infant bio son and all three boys are gorgeous. We also got to speak to two wonderful ladies at a “Birthright” booth, which is a Pregnancy Ministry that seeks to counsel women to choose life for their unborn babies when faced with an unplanned pregnancy as well as offering counseling to women going through psychological trauma of abortion. One of the volunteers at the booth said one of the main reasons people choose abortion is because they cannot bear the thought of giving up their baby for adoption. So it is easier to allow your unborn baby to be cut up into pieces during an abortion or have a doctor partially deliver the baby, crack open the skull and suck out the brain before delivering the fully formed baby. If the baby survives the abortion, the baby is left in a sink to die. This is the better choice? Anyhoo, the lady advised she would keep us in mind if she met someone who was making a choice for life for their unborn baby and wanted to make an adoption plan.

Our local Child Welfare Agency also had a booth at the festival. I never saw a solitary soul go to their booth and the two social workers manning the booth were not making any effort to talk to anyone. I almost went to volunteer there!!! Come on people!!! Children in my County and State are in crises, they need good foster and adoptive parents and the outreach social workers are not making any effort? I think the social workers are so apathetic and they all seem so jaded. I have yet to meet a social worker who works with the Child Welfare Agency who seems to have any passion for the children they are charged with protecting. I think the two social workers only wanted to put in their overtime and then go back to the office and complain that people are not willing to step up to the plate to foster or adopt children from the foster care system. Boy, am I starting to sound like an activist!!! I am convinced that the system is not doing enough to ensure that the hurting children who have had to be removed from abusive or neglected homes go into loving homes. Instead, they are herded into group homes where nobody cares. It does not help that just this week in my county, a 15 year old girl died from abuse and tortue at the hands of her foster parent--her paternal aunt. The autopsy revealed that she had been burned with hot irons and whipped with belts and electrical cords over a long period of time. Her twin brother also suffered from long-term abuse and he is in protective custody. The children had not attended school since September 2007 and after the fact, people now report seeing black eyes and signs of physical abuse, but no-one did anything! The Child Welfare Agency was supposed to be making regular visits to the home, but the last visit made was in September 2007! If only they would have done their jobs, maybe this child would be alive today and her brother would not have to deal with lifelong issues from the torture he has had to endure and losing his sister in such a horrendous way.

I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase (1st Corinthians 3: 6-7, KJV).

Taps

Today is the first day of the festival and it started on a very somber note—a police officer was gunned down trying to protect the lives of six people trapped in a house with a gunman who was intent on killing. The officer had responded to a domestic violence call at a place of business. The gunman had gone looking for his wife and when he did not find her (she had hidden in a bathroom), he followed her cousin (who also worked at the same place) to her friend’s house. Inside the house were six people including three very frightened children. The gunman then shot and killed his wife’s cousin before killing the police officer. It was a very sad day and it was made more mournful by a Messianic Jew playing taps on his Shofar (ram’s horn blown during Yom Kippur-Day of Atonement and Rosh Hashanah-Jewish New Year). The last officer killed in the line of duty in my town was in 1973. The police unit in my town is very close knit and the neighboring cities were very helpful in covering their shifts as they mourn the loss of a colleague. The crazy thing is that all this was happening less than a quarter mile from church where we were having a meeting and totally oblivious to the tragedy unfolding. It was not until we were at the People Festival that the Vice-Mayor informed us what had transpired that morning. Please pray for the police officer’s family—he lives behind a wife and three young children. Please also pray for his other victim’s family—she leaves behind two children.

Thanks Doc--it worked!

This morning, my son specifically requested to have veggies for breakfast so that his “bump” from last Friday’s mishap could go away! He ate up all his veggies—now I need ideas on how to make the bump go away! How cool it would be if our prospective child was around so that my son could encourage him to eat his veggies too!